


Still Trying

by thedastardly



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Infidelity, M/M, Ohmiya - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 08:24:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedastardly/pseuds/thedastardly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wonders if he purposefully obliterated those missing recollections, the ones where he was especially immature, to keep himself from forgetting the good parts. The parts where he and Satoshi were in love and happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Trying

A cup of cold coffee hits the white wall of an apartment. The resultant stain will linger as long as necessary, in the dimness of morning and into the evening, over the weeks and months to come.

 

The rain can not wash it away.

 

“You’re completely unfair!” Kazunari screams into the darkness of his empty apartment. It is cold from an entire day’s rainfall. Earlier, he left without anticipating the showers, the cool winds that moved silently through the city and into his home, permeating through the walls and settling onto the furniture. His soaked shoes are discarded haphazardly at the door, an afterthought. He cannot remember the last time he yelled like this, yelled in a way that made his voice crack in protest. He coughs to clear the sudden hoarseness, and wonders if his neighbors can hear him in their own apartments. Normally, he is quiet and keeps to himself - but he has never heard any of them either. Kazunari thinks of ghosts drifting past one another, taking no notice of the person next to them.

 

He and Satoshi have fought like this before, and he hates it every time they do it. But this time, this time is especially bad, and he regrets the words he cannot take back. His body is shaking; a pit has opened up in his stomach, sickness swirling inside him like the sea churning off the banks of Japan. Now, in the ensuing calm, he leans against the island counter in his kitchen and feels more alone than he has ever felt. He struggles with the feeling of some enormous weight that threatens to crush him, and his mobile phone feels heavy in his small palm. The hand strap is swinging.

 

Kazunari, now, does not feel like he meant it when he said those words. He does not feel like that particularly matters, either. He could have said one thousand different things, but the consequences would have stayed the same. Kazunari knows that, if he could push the stars back and rewind the earth until he arrives once again at that critical moment, he would still not have the ability to change the outcome. He knows that he will be difficult a million times, and in one million different universes. That he would ignore the text. That he would not reply. That he would leave things dangling like the red thread of fate, prematurely cut.

 

He wonders if he and Satoshi will find one another in the multitudes. If Satoshi will kill him in a war in China, or kiss him in a fit of passion, in the rain, in France. He wonders which of them will remember the other best. Kazunari hates thinking about any of it. For the message is still there, the pixels comprising the hiragana and kanji flickering at an impossible rate through the dimmed brightness of the cellphone screen. Those characters remain, as constant and true as the North Star.

 

And yet.

 

One day, he had thought, they would be together forever. Years ago, they were sure their relationship was the most important thing in each their lives. They had huddled together and inhaled each other’s carbon dioxide, and smiled, and laughed, and said ‘I love you’ in whatever ways they were able to. Not those words exactly.

 

And yet.

 

Kazunari had constructed lyrics and the music to go with them, words that he had been able to put together to express what about him was complicated. To convey why he thought that, maybe this time would be different, or why it was for the best that they had broken it off again.

 

Satoshi himself was intuitive, and played everything close to the cuff. He would say what needed to be said with his fingers on Kazunari’s elbow, or with a brief glance of his long fingers on Kazunari’s cheek. His words were always so carefully chosen. He was not ever really dull, was not ever really the person repeated jokes made him out to be. He was rarely at a loss for what to say; his talent was for keeping other people thinking that he was. There was, too, a poetry and music there, in the bodily contact Satoshi bestowed on him. Kazunari had decided that long ago, after the first time they truly touched one another as two people who wanted to be together.

 

And then there was Hawaii, 1999.

 

Satoshi had smiled with too many teeth for his small face. Had hugged him so tight that Kazunari was sure he would break into bits from it. Had they not both wanted to quit?

 

_Let’s make the best of it, okay?_

 

So, they both bought a shirt. And was that not all they had needed?

 

Years later, Kazunari threw it away, shoved it deep into the trashcan, in retaliation for the first time Satoshi made him feel any way other than like he was madly, hopelessly, in love. 

 

He felt as if he and Satoshi had been drawn together by that same red string of fate. And that belief made it difficult, so difficult for Kazunari. When they were young, he had once harbored a suspicion that Satoshi was sleeping with his senpai Okada, but he was never able to mount enough courage to ask about it. Instead, he let the fear of losing Satoshi to another man fester and grow, making him hard to deal with and angry for no reason. A boy so young, so difficult. 

 

And now.

 

Now,

 

“Don’t do this,” Kazunari murmurs as he checks his phone again, reading the characters over and over. “Don’t fucking do this to me.”

 

Even as he says it, the words feel hollow and empty. They float up toward his ceiling and hang there until he cannot feel them any longer. Until they roll like the heavy thunder that follows the heave of the sky.

 

His heart is heavy, his heart is the cause of the weight on his chest. It makes him tired. He wonders if this is how Satoshi felt so much of the time, heart beating heavy and tired in his chest as Kazunari pushed him away, drifted from him and into the froth of the ocean water he loved, those waters that wash star shaped fossils onto the sand. He wonders if Satoshi was feeling that way when it happened. If he loved him any less at the moment of his death. Or if, perhaps, he regretted all of their previous fights, their previous hook-ups, their hang-ups.

 

But is regret any better?

 

“You can’t leave,” Kazunari insists before he sinks low to the tiled floor of his kitchen. He rests his head on his arms for a moment, thinking. It is a long time before he moves again. He is aware that the sun has set, and that spurs him to wait even longer before his movements gain any momentum or purpose. He wants to erupt like the volcano that created their tiny island did, eons ago. He wants to force the sea to burn and boil like that again for what it has done. He feels the ocean, the one thing he has always feared, under his skin now, in his veins. Tears are springing hot in the corners of his eyes. If he is going to cry, it better be now, for he knows he will soon lose the will to show any emotion.

 

The phone exploding into a galaxy of plastic against the wall proves to be just as satisfying as the cup was.

 

-

 

Kazunari thinks he remembers it all clearly, up to a point. It is true that some parts are slightly more blurred, while others are clear as crystal, but he remembers. And then, suddenly, he does not remember. He wonders if he purposefully obliterated those missing recollections, the ones where he was especially immature, to keep himself from forgetting the good parts. The parts where he and Satoshi were in love and happy.

 

When had they started dating secretly in 2003, it was almost exhilarating. An exciting new exploit they they were able to experience with one another, that no one else knew about. Satoshi was good when he was all his, and Kazunari was sure that they were in love with one another when they met, alone, and learned each other’s teenage bodies. Kazunari liked the way Satoshi pressed his fingers between the lines of his ribs, the way he thumbed his nipples, laughing quietly to shield his embarrassment.

 

“Kazunari is cute,” he had purred over every inch of skin he dragged his nails across. Kazunari remembered those words every time they were said, and filed them away for later, to jerk off to, to blush over. Satoshi pointed out how red his ears got when he was complimented, and Kazunari had yelled at him about that, too. Telling him off was easier than being embarrassed over something he was feeling about someone else.

 

Their first fight did not concern anything in particular.

 

Kazunari, even then, knew that his moods drifted like beach wood being carried out to sea, then back to shore. One minute he was happy, and the next he was not. When he re-watches his appearances on variety shows, he sees the faces he makes and thinks, ‘Did I really look that way? Why?’

 

He remembers yelling at Satoshi over something stupid, some random occurrence, agitated nerves sparking in his body. Frequently, he wanted to push people out of the way, push them away from him. He cannot remember what it was that he had been upset by, but he knows that Satoshi was not even half as upset as he was.

 

So Kazunari had shoved the shirt, threadbare and aging, into the trash can. He remembers that he had cried for at least an hour afterwards. He remembers wiping his nose on his sleeve and feeling foolish and childish. 

 

Satoshi’s voice on the mobile after that was warm and comforting.

 

“You’re going to be so miserable with me. I’m going to ruin everything,” Kazunari sobbed, and Satoshi had laughed at that, brightly, without menace.

 

“Don’t be stupid.”

 

“I’m not. I’m not being stupid, Satoshi! I’m being realistic. I’m being mature. I’m telling you right now that we can’t be doing this, because it’s never going to work out. It isn’t, is it?” Kazunari’s words were hurried and frantic. He often does not think about his words before he uses them. He is trying not to cry again, remembering that.

 

“Ah, is that it?” Satoshi replied, evenly. Kazunari could not tell if he was angry.

 

“Yeah, that’s it.” The chasm between them, at this time, is only a few inches wide, but it is there.

 

“I’ll see you at filming,” Satoshi said, and he hung up without saying goodbye. Kazunari convinced himself that it is for the best. That things will be even better this way. He does not need to do this to the group, or to Johnny’s - he and Satoshi were being immature. He knew how it would have been dealt with if it got out. 

 

Kazunari has never liked dealing with the consequences of his actions anyway.

 

-

 

Kazunari tried to pretend for a year that he does not itch to touch Satoshi. He acted as if he did not want to shove the other man into a closet, and jerk him off until he came, messy and wet all over his knuckles. He pretended that he did not want to talk to Satoshi about how badly he wanted him; fingers, hands, hips, knees, toes.

 

Instead, he scribbled characters onto scraps of paper around his apartment. He hedged on what exactly he wants to express, and how to say it, fussing over the right combinations of feeling and music. He thought about how he sounds, how the words are so embarrassingly open and familiar. Kazunari began a notebook of words thrown together. He thought they could be songs. One day, maybe.

 

He threw the notebook into the garbage twice, and retrieved it only the first time.

 

He waved goodbye to the garbage truck from his window the second time.

 

He does not regret that act as much as he regrets what followed, the beers and the phone call to Satoshi.

 

“Come over, Oh-chan,” he purred, all sloppy sentiment and false poutiness over the phone, cradling it between his neck and shoulder so he could play an erotic dating simulation on his new DS at the same time. He could tell that Satoshi was a little drunk, too, when he spoke. He had been out with his Senpai all night, and then, he was standing in a bathroom, at a bar, chatting on the phone. Acting weird, being rude. Kazunari could hear the smile in his drunken voice, the laughter he does not hold back. He agreed to come over anyway.

 

-

 

Kazunari had answered the door and found a red faced Ohno Satoshi there. He greeted him, and helped him in by yanking his shoes off at the threshold. It was the dead of winter, and Kazunari tried to hurry Satoshi as much as he could, trying to keep the cold out. They moved with purpose toward the bedroom, but only made it as far as the living room couch.

 

Satoshi had Kazunari bent over the arm of the sofa, face buried in his ass before Kazunari could begin to argue. One year and a half of pent up sexual energy quickly found it’s way out of their bodies. Kazunari had pressed his face into the arm of his couch as Satoshi rimmed him, and moaned quietly, begging for more of the other man’s touches, his affections. His heart was beating fast in his chest, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead as he rocked back to meet Satoshi’s eager mouth.

 

Kazunari then knew that when they are on again, they are _really_ on. He could not contemplate the meaning of it any further than that. Instead, he begged for Satoshi to fuck him, and when he finally did, the intensity of it made his nerves light up. Satoshi’s easy rhythm and his dancer’s hips, moving languidly, but with purpose. Kazunari became a small fire to Satoshi’s vast waters, a vast, open sea and the reflecting sun. The combination was blinding

 

Kazunari did not even have to touch himself to come.

 

Afterwards, Kazunari’s knees were weak with orgasm and the peculiar feeling of post-anal sex emptiness. Satoshi was in his shower, singing old man songs about fishwives. Songs he knew from some other place. Kazunari wiped his face on his arm, and thought only of sleep. His buzz wore off at least ten minutes after Satoshi finished on his ass, and he quickly began to feel grumpy and drowsy from too much physical exertion.

 

“Are you hungry?” Satoshi asked (shouted) from the shower.

 

“Very,” Kazunari conceded. It was four a.m., according to the digital clock Kazunari could see from the couch. He still had not moved, not in fifteen minutes. Not until the shower turned off did he finally sit up, onto his haunches, and meet Satoshi’s eyes as he came out of the bathroom, toweling his hair. Then, his gaze dropped, to the patch of coarse hair at the base of Satoshi’s pelvis and up again, tracing the way the hair becomes thinner, towards Satoshi’s belly button. Then, Kazunari knows he will never, ever, stop thinking about that, for as long as he lives.

 

“Are you going to cook?” Kazunari finally mustered. He needs to shower, but he wants to suck Satoshi off. He doesn’t want to not be having sex with Ohno Satoshi, every second of every day.

 

“I am, I am,” Satoshi nodded and smiled. “Can I borrow some sweats?”

 

“You can, you can,” Kazunari smiled back, and felt the tug of Satoshi’s rod and reel at his heart once again, biting and being yanked fully out of the sea. He is weak and helpless, and Satoshi has him in his hands, hoisting him jovially above his head. The prize, the prize.

 

Kazunari knows he will fall for it again, and again.

 

Hook, line, sinker.

 

-

 

“I can’t believe you’re going to act sanctimonious, and say that I’m the one who’s not putting himself wholly into this!” Kazunari heard thunder outside when he said the words. The trees were shaking, and a heavy rain had started to fall. Satoshi was standing at the counter, rubbing his face. He looked serious, exhausted. “Say something!”

 

“I don’t have anything to say,” Satoshi’s voice was, as always, even, but he was annoyed; Kazunari learned to read him between the lines and knew this, yet he still pushed. He could not even pretend to not understand the language of Ohno Satoshi. He was too complex a book to not pore over, too emotional a read to not learn by heart. 

 

Satoshi touched the scar on his cheek absently. He, too, has learned the story that was Kazunari, and Kazunari knew this.

 

He knew that the frustrations of dating him, of trying to love him, would eventually become too overwhelming. Still, Kazunari was not ready to let him go. Besides, he reasoned, Satoshi had changed as well. He was not ever complicated when they first started dating, not like he became. He was always as nice and simple as an expected, warm breeze. Kazunari knew that his baggage, his bullshit, had driven the man he loved to grow weary and old almost overnight. He wanted Satoshi to flip him off, to shove him playfully - and he did. He wanted to play fight and then fuck - and they did. But not often enough, because they so often found themselves attempting to force the other to say ‘I love you’. When did those words gain so much power over their relationship?

 

Did they even love each other? Kazunari was sure that they were in love, for a long time. He was once sure that they would just end up together, bound by that red string of fate. But he began to wonder, and became increasingly unsure. He became afraid of the prospect of the future, afraid that they would be together forever. And he hated himself for being that way. For loving Satoshi so much, so fully, yet pushing his love away at the same time. Satoshi was always the one who was so mature about their relationship, while Kazunari tried to make it as spontaneous and fleeting as possible, under the guise of professionalism. 

 

Kazunari had tried to explain it once, bluntly: ‘I’m not the kind of person who says I love you. I’m the kind of person who likes to be left alone.’

 

After, Satoshi had licked the back of his neck and then fucked him on the floor. Kazunari had died in his video game.

 

“Then say it!” Kazunari found himself screaming again. He wanted to throw something, he always wants to throw something, still. His eyes were stinging with tears, but he did not let the dam break. “Just say it, Satoshi! Say what needs to be said! This was never going to work!” Kazunari swiped his hand across his eyes quickly, fending off the deja vu. He thought, ‘Just say it. Just say it and it will all be better.’ He wondered why this kept happening. “Just say I’m too difficult to deal with, that you don’t want to keep doing this. I’m tired of writing songs for you, and I’m tired of waiting around for you to decide whose turn it is to say I love you.” He could not shout any more, and the tears dried up.

 

“I have to go,” Satoshi lifted himself from the chair, moved to the door, picked up his umbrella, slipped on his shoes, with the inborn grace of a natural dancer. Kazunari did not move from where he was standing in the kitchen. He was afraid, once again, afraid to move. He imagined Satoshi’s shadow in the hallway, without seeing it, the dim light of the cloudy day stretching the shadow across the floor.

 

The door opened, and the rain became louder. The storm covered the sounds of Satoshi leaving.

 

Satoshi did not say goodbye.

 

-

 

Kazunari does not want to think about that though, he wants to think about something else.

 

-

 

Kazunari watched the necklace that Satoshi was wearing swing in time to his thrusts. He was mesmerized by it, by watching it swing back and forth around his neck. Satoshi’s eyes were closed in concentration, and Kazunari reached up to touch the other man’s face, his lips, his hair. Satoshi’s eyes finally met his.

 

He hummed an rhetorical question before he bent down and buried his face into the side of Kazunari’s neck. Kazunari laughed at the way his breath tickled against the small hairs there, laughed at the kisses that Satoshi pressed to his skin. Satoshi laughed, too, at Kazunari’s laugh, and pulled back to look at the other man’s face, contemplating him seriously before he readjusted himself. An artist’s assessment.

 

Satoshi placed his elbows on either side of Kazunari’s face, and swept his bangs back from his forehead before he kissed the clearing he had created. Kazunari watched the way that Satoshi’s face flushed, from his ears down, and brought his arms up to wrap loosely around Satoshi’s neck. Satoshi’s pendant was cold against his skin.

 

“I’m gonna come,” Satoshi murmured, and Kazunari nodded, flushing as well as he canted his hips slightly upward.

 

After, Kazunari smoked a cigarette in bed and swirled his own come over his stomach with his index finger. Satoshi tied off the condom and flung it into the trash. He brought his foot up and pressed the bottom of it to the opposite thigh, running a thumb over the protruding bone there.

 

“I was thinking about your new song,” Satoshi said, without prompt, as he rubbed his ankle and wiggled the toes on his other foot. He watched them, not looking at Kazunari.

 

“Oh yeah?” Kazunari examined his fingernails. He did not let the feeling of his heart jumping into his throat come out in his voice.

 

“It’s about me, right?” He said it amusedly, almost laughing. “You’re mad about the girls.”

 

“How presumptuous of you, Oh-chan. Are you high right now?” Kazunari purred, and ashed his cigarette in a mug next to the bed. “Besides, I have a girlfriend right now anyway. Of course, two girls is always better than one . . .”

 

Satoshi smiled and looked at Kazunari in bed next to him, but his eyes betrayed the hurt that he felt from Kazunari’s stringing barbs. Kazunari felt immediately bad about it. They had fought and then, a few days later, Satoshi’s dirty laundry was aired in the news. Kazunari had read the story in a scandal rag, like some common fangirl. He was disgusted, but keeping his hands off Satoshi was practically impossible, even half a year after the scandal had come to light. Not a few months after he vowed Satoshi off, he found himself pushing the other man up against a wall, and rolling his hips against Satoshi’s, and saying something filthy, like _‘_ Take me from behind, like a dog _’_ , and Satoshi had gasped and tried not to laugh, but agreed. 

 

They had fucked facing each other.

 

“I think I like this song better than your last one.”

 

“The last one was written by a lovesick boy. This is a song by a man who is tired of his boyfriend’s bullshit.”

 

“You can’t stay away, ne?” Satoshi hummed and looked at his ankle again, smirking. He leaned back against the pillows, and turned toward Kazunari, his face cute and small as always. He blinked once, twice. Twitching. Thinking. “Tell me you love me, Kazu-chan.”

 

Kazunari stubbed his cigarette out in the mug next to his side of the bed, and let his lips form into a pouty, kittenish shape. Suitable for his face. “Never.”

 

-

 

Kazunari decides he doesn’t like that memory either, though.

 

Instead, he thinks about when Jun came into the house, clambering over the threshold and into Kazunari’s kitchen. He had been crying, more crying, more then Nino had ever seen him cry. Then, Jun was in Kazunari’s arms before either of them thought about it. Kazunari wondered if he had been drinking. It was very late, Kazunari knew, so he did not doubt it. He had fallen asleep for a little while on his kitchen floor, legs hiked up to his chest and his arms folded over them. He could feel where his cheek had an impression of the fabric of his jacket.

 

The ocean had not receded, this much he knew. Jun’s hair was damp from rain water, and pushed away from his face. Kazunari felt it when he touched the other man’s clothes, his hair, his face. The sea had not released them yet. The moon hung high, heavy and round. Full to the brim and bursting. Kazunari could see it in his mind’s eye.

 

It was a fisherman’s moon.

 

Kazunari’s hands fisted in Jun’s shirt, and he pulled him closer, until he thought that they might become one version of the same sadness. His arms were instinctively around his friend, performing the motions of comforting, but he did not feel very much at all.

 

Kazunari tries to remember everything but this: Jun’s ragged breathing and sobbing mush mouth, the color of his face in the dim light. The ‘why, why, why’ that follows every syllable. It begins to all mesh together. To Kazunari, it sounds like the ocean breaking on the shore during a storm. Kazunari’s tongue is heavy and tired again. Will he ever feel normal?

 

 He knew though.

 

He knew that their tides would be pulled to him.

 

-

 

It is less than a week later when they have the interview. Everyone is quiet and hangs their heads low. They do not speak to one another. Johnny’s Entertainment had wanted to have a press conference, but their individual managers had instead talked the company into an interview. It was supposed to be sensitive to the agony of the surviving members.

 

Kazunari knows they are only here because they have to be. Kazunari wishes he was at home, looking through photo albums of Satoshi, and himself, and the rest of them. He thinks of a photo he had taken out of his album and stuffed into the drawer next to his bed, of Satoshi eating watermelon in his kitchen. He can think of no other pictures now.

 

Kazunari sits between Sho and Masaki, his thighs touching the sides of theirs. He feels as if he is safe and anchored this way, rooted to them both. Masaki is crying again, his eyes are rimmed red, and his nose is too. Kazunari’s hand snakes over and touches Masaki’s pinkie. He starts, almost as if he had forgotten where they were.

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“Yes,” Masaki agrees, nodding, but Kazunari knows he does not mean it, his eyes are still crying. Kazunari offers him a handkerchief, and Masaki takes it, clutching it tightly. He does not use it. Kazunari moves back to sit up straight. 

 

Their interviewer is not anyone that Kazunari knows particularly well. He is severe and serious. They are on air soon. Kazunari feels like the room is getting smaller. The preliminary questions are muffled in his ears. He hears rainfall, pitter pattering on the roof of his apartment, on the roof of the boat.

 

Kazunari is staring at the interviewer’s hands, watching them shuffle through the papers he has prepared, questions he has no business asking. He thinks of the way white wave caps look on a dark ocean. Satoshi had tan hands, too. And now, Kazunari can hear the ocean outside the windows of the room, hear it hitting the side of the small boat with thick slaps. He can hear Satoshi laughing with the captain, their reels safely stored. His life jacket is blue with yellow straps. He’s smiling as the captain steers, and he is laughing, and he is singing the songs about fishwives that the captain taught him. The fish are safely stored in the cooler.

 

“What is next for Arashi?” The interviewer asks, and Kazunari’s eyes snap up to look at the man. He wonders what kind of question it is supposed to be. Jun speaks before anyone else.

 

“There isn’t really an Arashi anymore, is there?” He sounds bitter at the man for asking. Kazunari feels Sho tense up next to him.

 

“Ah, of course, of course. So,” he pauses, dramatically - does he think this is a play? - before he proceeds. “What about the scandal that was going to be published later this week?” The interviewer is showing them a picture of Satoshi, in grainy black and white, leaning close to another person. A man. It is someone Kazunari does not recognize, and Satoshi is kissing him on the mouth. He looks happy, the other man looks happy, everything about it seems genuine. What could be scandalous about such happiness? Kazunari feels his ears get hot. Did he and Satoshi look that happy when they kissed, toward the end? He does not speak.

 

“This is fucking bullshit,” Sho explodes, and he rips his mic from his shirt and throws it down, disgusted. “Come on, this is ridiculous.” He leans over and pulls Kazunari’s mic off his shirt, too, and throws it haphazardly behind him. He does not care where it lands. Kazunari grabs his hand, and is aware that, somehow, they are standing and moving away. The people on the set are quiet around them. Their microphones are singing to each other until the sound technician cuts them off. Kazunari has Sho’s hand, and Sho has his. They are not going to float away. They will not be lost to the ocean.

 

In quick succession, Jun removes his mic and lays it neatly on the table between their couch and the interviewer’s. He does not speak as he does it, and then briskly follows Kazunari and Sho. Masaki follows suit just as quickly; he lays the mic on the table neatly and bows, his nose almost touching his knees.

 

“Sorry,” Masaki sobs. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

 

Kazunari can hear the sea turning, and enveloping their broken little boat.

 

-

 

“Who gives a fuck if he was gay or straight! He’s dead, have some decency,” Sho is yelling at his manager over the phone, on the bus. Kazunari has never seen him this angry. He does not think that Sho has ever seen himself this angry. Jun’s hand is holding his tightly, on one side, and Masaki has his other. He feels like a grieving widow.

 

He knows that he did not deserve Satoshi, though. He thinks he never did, not even when they made each other happy. It was too much to ask for a perfect person to love you, to love you like gods love the earth. He does not know why he is the one getting special treatment. Satoshi had a boyfriend. Jun and Masaki should be comforting him right now.

 

Kazunari wonders what this other man has that he does not. He is curious about the date of the photo, and about the nature of the other man. Kazunari can barely make out his features, beyond the smile between their lips, that extends upward and crinkles his eyes, but it is easy to imagine the emotion that must flood him when he sees Satoshi’s face on the news, all the time, he is always on the news now -

 

Does Mama Ohno know this man? Like him? Are they crying together right now?

 

Kazunari pulls out of the grasp of his friends, and takes the phone from Sho wordlessly. He gently taps the red button on the screen with his nail and puts it into Sho’s jacket pocket. “It doesn’t matter, Sho.” He takes his seat between Jun and Masaki again.

 

“It does matter, Kazunari!” Sho insists, desperately.

 

“Just drop it, Sho,” Jun says but Sho does not drop it, can not. Jun does not want his last memory of Satoshi to be some scandal that never was, and Sho’s crusade to stop it. Kazunari cannot say he blames him, but he also cannot stop thinking about the man in the photograph.

 

“We are just supposed to sit here and listen to them drag his name through the mud like this? They are trying to posthumously embarrass him!” Sho’s voice wavers, and everyone is looking at him without speaking. Sho relents, and is silent for a long time before he lets a laugh, angry and grieving, bubble up from his throat. “Why did he leave? Why did he leave us with all this bullshit? Why did he leave us? This is so unfair.”

 

Kazunari moves closer and takes Sho’s face in his hands. He presses their foreheads together.

 

In his heart, the ocean recedes.

 

-

 

The sex he has with Sho feels nearly forced, and overly needy. They are both sickly drunk, because drinking was all Kazunari could think to do when Sho had arrived at his door. His full moon drawing the storm toward him.

 

He can feel their excuses behind each touch. He can feel the frantic words that Sho wishes he could have said as he pulls Kazunari’s pants down, and shoves him over the side of the bed. How much did Sho love Satoshi? Why did he not see it before? How much did he hate seeing that grainy black and white photograph? Kazunari thinks they must have hated it the same way, because it was not either of them making their leader that happy. And he hates Sho for thinking he even has the right to hate it. And he hates himself for thinking that.

 

Kazunari refuses to face Sho during. He pushes the condom away, and sucks on Sho’s fingers without the other man asking him to. He talks dirty to him, begging him for sex, for the feeling of being used. He moans until Sho covers his mouth with his hand, and closes his eyes, and pretends that they are Satoshi’s fingers gripping his face.

 

He feels dirty the entire time and despises Satoshi for it, wrongfully. Knowing he is wrong to hate Satoshi for his own mistakes. To have ever disliked Satoshi for anything.

 

He cries afterward, and yells at Sho for trying to comfort him, slaps his hand away so hard that Sho almost retaliates, temper flaring. But he calms himself, trying to fill Satoshi’s role, for just that moment.

 

“Stop being such a faggot, Sakurai,” Kazunari whimpers without bite, wiping his face on his hands.

 

“All right, Kazunari. It’s all right,” Sho says and takes him into his arms anyway. Kazunari can taste the salt from his tears running off his nose. He does not push Sho away. Instead, he presses his face into Sho’s chest and heaves sobs until he is too weak to do even that anymore. 

 

“Did you ever fuck Satoshi?” He asks it suddenly, and Sho makes a surprised sound. 

 

“No! Shit, Kazunari,” Sho sounds sincere, but Kazunari does not believe him. He does not think he ever will. Even if he could peer into every part of Sho’s soul, he would not believe him.

 

Sho does not ask Kazunari the same question, and Kazunari knows why.

 

He feels sick, and he waits until Sho falls asleep to get up and go into the bathroom. He cleans come off his thighs, and looks at his reflection in the mirror, examining the bags under his eyes. He has aged dramatically, he thinks. He will reach old age and shrivel up soon, he hopes. He also examines a fading bruise from over a week ago. A remainder from his last fuck with Satoshi. The last imprint of Satoshi’s hands on his body, the last concrete evidence of what they shared.

 

They were fucking while Satoshi had a boyfriend. Kazunari thinks about all the people that Satoshi might have slept with besides himself, and he is jealous and sick from the thought. He scrubs Sho’s come from his thighs until his skin is raw and red. The entire time, he thinks about Satoshi in other beds, the sheets changing color to suit the owners. He tries to remember every face Satoshi had made during their love making, and imagines him making those expressions with other people. With the nameless boyfriend, those girls, and less coherently, with Okada, with Sho.

 

He thinks about Okada fucking Satoshi, and thinks about Sho fucking Satoshi, and throws up in the sink.

 

-

 

Kazunari knows that there is a report of what happened to Ohno Satoshi, aboard a one-crew fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean. He knows what the report says, and what it speculates. He knows they have built a story based on the day’s events. He does not read those accounts. Instead, he pieces together his own. He thinks it happened this way:

 

Satoshi awoke before dawn, and ate a western breakfast of eggs over toast with ketchup. He checked the messages on his phone, and then the weather, online. The site’s doppler assured him that it was clear and sunny now, and it would be all day. Calm. It had been a summer of unseasonal rain storms, but today called for the perfect weather. He dressed in warm pants, a long sleeved shirt and his rain slicker. He pulled on his boots.

 

He checked his messages.

 

Satoshi put on a mask and ventured outside. He boarded the train to take him to the docks and sat down in a corner. No one bothered him. No one recognized him. He checked his messages. He arrived just as the sun began peeking over the skyline.

 

The captain of his vessel greeted him cheerily, as always, and Satoshi helped him carry things aboard the boat, including his rented fishing rod - he did not like to carry his own on the train. He and the captain laughed and joked as they transported their equipment onto the ship. Satoshi bought them coffee from the bait shop, and a lure with a bright blue feather that he put into his coat pocket, still in the wrapping. He checked his messages.

 

The captain said they were ready to go.

 

Satoshi said, _Just a moment._

 

Then, he tapped out a message on the touch screen of his phone, and his face twitched and he blinked rapidly.

 

The message read: _Please, wait for me._ He made sure the message went through.

 

Then, he climbed onto the boat, and put on his blue life jacket with the yellow straps. He sang an old song with the captain as they idled out of the dock, off into the clear, bright day, and laughed with him at all the inappropriate lyrics.

 

Satoshi fished through the morning after applying a coat of sunblock to his tan skin. He caught three fish in one hour, and then four in another. A perfect day for fishing. The captain gave him a bento for lunch from the konbini and he ate it in silence. The storm hit them at eleven a.m., seemingly out of nowhere, and surprisingly vengeful, and the captain turned the boat back towards the shore. He was not afraid.

 

In Tokyo, Kazunari’s phone buzzed on the nightstand alerting him for the up tenth time that he had a new message. He continued to ignore it.

 

At noon, a mayday came from the small fishing vessel in the Pacific Ocean. Satoshi bailed water, saltwater pushing in through a broken window, from the boat with a blue bucket. By twelve thirty, the boat was sinking. By one p.m., the crew was lost to a wave that the little vessel could not withstand. The storm was too intense, and made the ocean too rough, remorseless - indifferent.

 

Kazunari rolls his eyes at the screen of his phone, unwilling to compromise the fight he is still hanging onto from three nights ago. He spends the day indoors, listening to the rain and playing video games. 

 

_Kazunari never really changes._

 

The bodies are found a day later when the waters have calmed. Families are notified within the hour. Another storm rolls towards the city of Tokyo. Kazunari gets his keys and phone. He thinks about how today he will ignore Satoshi until he is begging for his affections again. 

 

Kazunari misses him already. He hums Satoshi’s newest solo.

 

The text message remains unread.

 

-

 

Kazunari wonders if things would be different if he had read the message before Jun sat him down, eyes rimmed red. Before he saw the way Sho was staring ahead, unflinchingly serious. Before he saw Masaki sobbing into his hands.

 

Would time have split off into a different path? Would Satoshi have somehow survived the wave, the boat sinking? Would he have changed his mind about fishing halfway out and said, ‘Take me back to land, there’s something I need to do’?

 

Kazunari runs through a million different catalysts in his mind, but he knows that this is the reality they are settled on. This is the path that splits off and does not meet back up with any of the others. This is the rest of their lives

 

“Where’s Satoshi?” His voice sounded small, young for some reason. He could not seem to raise it above the din of rainwater and ocean sounds he was suddenly hearing in his ears. Sho touched his face and looked away. Jun wrapped his arms around Kazunari’s shoulders. Kazunari could hear himself speaking, and wondered why his voice sounds the way it does. ‘Why do I sound so stupid and small and fucking childish? _’_

 

“Where’s Oh-chan?” He felt like he was fragile in Jun’s arms, and that feeling alone threatened to destroy him. As if he was a child again, and his mother is explaining to him why he does not have a father, why he is not like the other children at his school, the children who make fun of his broken family. He felt stupid and hated it. He hated that everyone was crying about something (‘Not just something, you know exactly why they’re crying’) and no one would tell him the answer.

 

He could not hear anything over the din of the ocean in his ears. The storms were so bad, so uncharacteristically bad, recently. Japan’s ocean rarely asks anything of her people, so they become complacent, forgetting how wrathful she can be.

 

He removed his phone from his pocket. No one had said it yet but they were going to. They had to.

 

 _‘_ Satoshi’s not coming _.’_ It hangs unsaid, but undeniably present, crushingly real.

 

“But he texted me,” Kazunari opened his phone and looked at the text dated from the previous day. “He texted me.”

 

Kazunari read it for the first time: 

 

‘Please wait for me.’

 

Kazunari’s chest tightened. His heart hurt. That was just like Satoshi though, always trying to make things work when Kazunari was being immature and trying to make them end. He was always the one who let the touches come flowing back, who never shied away from kissing when they were alone.

 

“Kazunari, Satoshi is . . .” Jun inhaled sharply. Masaki’s sobbing got worse.

 

Kazunari could not think of anything but the words 'Don’t say it' and ‘I’ve always hated the ocean.’

 

-

 

When Kazunari arrived home, the wound was still fresh. It still ached all over, almost worse than before. He did not remember removing his shoes, or dropping his umbrella in the stand. He barely remembered getting his phone out and reading the text again, knowing that if he replies to it it won’t go through. He does not remember going to the counter, or lifting the mug of cold coffee from that morning into his hands. 

 

He does not really remember throwing it. 

 

-

 

“I hate the picture they picked for his service,” Jun says quietly, as he takes a seat at the island counter next to Sho in Kazunari’s apartment, rubbing his face. Kazunari is standing on the far side of it, watching both men as they speak quietly. Sho’s coat is hanging on the dining room chair. Masaki is asleep in the living room, still wearing his suit jacket. His toe is peeking through a hole in his old pair of socks. His favorite socks.

 

Kazunari opens his fridge and reaches for the beers. He gives one to Sho, and one to Jun. He opens his own first, holding it up and out toward the others.

 

“It could have been worse,” Sho says, as he opens his own beer and holds it up toward Kazunari’s beer. Jun follows suit. The bump them together so hard that the foam gets up and overflows the top of the cans.

 

“It could have been worse,” Jun agrees, quietly.

 

The foam runs over their hands, and Kazunari can smell the salt water sticking to Satoshi’s hair, his lips, can hear his voice say, _I’m back, I’m back,_

_and I’m still trying._

Kazunari tips his beer toward his lips and drinks.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to langolier-s on tumblr for the beta.


End file.
